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by Chris Kenworthy (scoobyhq@fcmail.com)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters that you recognize from the Buffy television show and don't make money off of them.
Tom had already come to the same conclusion. "Willow," he muttered, letting his voice penetrate the mild trance that the pretty teenager had been placed in. It wasn't a particularly versatile means of control - the subject would succesfully resist an order to do anything they would have strong objections to doing while awake - but it should suffice for his purposes for now. After tonight, he would have access to the Staff of Shadows, which could cloud the minds of mortals... Tom shook his head and got back to business. "Willow, in a few seconds I'm going to let go of your hand. Leave your left arm where it is, and I'll slide my right hand up it to your shoulder. That will enable you to have your hand free without breaking the circle. Okay?" Willow nodded.
"Now." Tom slipped his hand out of the girls, and slid it up the smooth leather of her suit until it got to her shoulder. "Okay. Now, in a second Jim is going to do the same thing so that your right arm is free, alright?" Willow and Jim nodded, and soon Jim also was holding her at the shoulder.
"Okay," Tom said. Here was where things would get interesting. "Now pick up that knife in your right hand and run the blade lightly across your left palm. Just hard enough to draw blood - no harder - and you'll find it doesn't even hardly hurt. Alright?"
Slowly, uncertainly, Willow picked up the antique dagger they had tracked down in Hullston and cut it slightly into her other hand, exactly as described. "With this touch, and the drawing of blood," Tom called out, "we call on Valerie, the Brawler of Belissa, to come before us in the person of this girl Willow, strong and beautiful, a fitting host for the brave Valerie!"
Willow's body jerked. "I am Valerie," she said in a smoky voice. "Who is it that calls me centuries after I was returned to the dust from which I came?"
Jim opened his mouth to speak, but Jim cut him off. "I, Thomas Crayfield of the Brotherhood of the Bat, call upon you, Valerie." If any but Tom himself adressed the spirit, his control of the seance might be disrupted. "Is there any recompense I can offer you as an apology for disturbing your rest?" Tom took Willow's hand in his again, and Jim quickly followed suit again.
Willow's face turned to look at him with an expression that came from one dead long ago. "No. There is nothing that those who came after can do for me now. Why did you seek to channel me?"
"We were hoping," Tom said delicately, "to learn some of your life story. Particularly about your battle with the Upriser and your death."
"The Upriser?" Willow/Valerie exclaimed. "What would you with that wretch??"
Tom thought furiously. Valerie and her sister would certainly refuse to co-operate if they knew the entire plan, but he was a vampire of his word and disliked outright lies. "What would we with the Upriser? Well, that is what we are summoning your spirit and that of your sister to determine, but we are not his friends."
That seemed to mollify Valerie. "I found this town sitting upon the Hellmouth, this Sunnydale, and had been feeding here for a week when the Upriser and his gargoyle goons came to me. He said that he was charging hunting fees for his town. I didn't realize how dangerous he was, and attacked him. I had incapacitated one gargoyle and killed the other when he cut off my head with a sword. That is about as much as I can tell you about the Upriser."
"Well, thank you Valerie," Tom said. "One question, if I might - in what year did this take place?"
Valerie smiled. "The year as the humans counted it was 1851. May I depart at this point?"
"Uh, no," Tom said mildly. "We will be calling up your sister at this point. I'd like you to remain for that."
"Oh, certainly," Valerie replied. "I would quite like to remain for that."
"Good," Tom muttered. "Cordelia, Bob and I are going to move our hands up to your shoulders at this point, to free up your hands while keeping the circle unbroken, alright? Once we do, I'd like you to pick up the scepter in your right hand and run one of its sharp edges into your left palm, alright? It won't even hurt..."
(In the kitchen corridor.)
Cole could only allow himself the luxury of a few seconds of shock. If he had any chance to save Buffy, it was slipping quickly away from him.
She needed blood, and not the blood that had been spilled on the floor and all over herself. It would have to be Cole's own. Could he actually do that? He would have to.
A quick raid of a kitchen storeroom yielded a mid-length sharp knife, a funnel, a length of plastic tubing and a spare dishwaser spray jet nozzle that just might do service as a needle. These would be all the surgical tools he had. Cole shivered at the thought. He wasn't trained for anything even approaching this. Could he actually do it? One look at Buffy's unconscious form provided the only answer Cole had - he had to do it!
What was first? Crossmatch - the transfusion would certainly sign her death certificate if their blood types were incompatible. Buffy's blood was everywhere, so Cole just cut into his finger and let a drop of his own fall out and mix with it. Not knowing if the clotting would be visible to the unaided eye, he probed into the mixing blood, willing his healer's sense to let him know if there was any incompatibility, any adverse reaction. But there was nothing.
Well, he'd just have to take that as a good sign. Willing peaceful and painless sleep onto his patient with a touch, Cole cut into her other arm, looking for a sizable vein, healing the cut beyond the spread he needed. Saying a prayer to any gods he had ever heard of, he cut carefully into the vein, stuck the nozzle jet into it, and quickly arranged the tube to lead into the nozzle and the funnel to feed into the tube.
Here it was. Now Cole turned the knife on himself, slicing open his wrist and letting the blood flow into the funnel and from there, hopefully, down into Buffy's system. Miraculously, it seemed to be working. At least no blood seemed to be leaking, either onto the floor or into Buffy's arm tissue. Cole kept the transfusion up until he judged he had 'donated' two pints. Any more and I might be the one to end up dead, Cole thought as he healed himself and Buffy back up. Surely enough, he was quite unsteady on his feet as he headed back down the corridor.
After a few paces, Cole turned around and went back around the corner. I can't leave her like this, he thought, not after what's just happened. Cole lurched into the kitchen, took the opportunity to dump his 'instruments' in a sink and clean himself up a bit, and grabbed a slip of paper and the pen from the notepad on the wall. Quickly he jotted out a short message, left it unsigned, and left it in Buffy's hand before disappearing back into the main room.
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